There is much speculation around when the Ferguson Grand Jury is likely to finally release their (widely expected) no true bill (non-indictment) of Police Officer Darren Wilson over the shooting death of Mike Brown.

A great many people, myself included, have suggested that the authorities responsible for the release of the Grand Jury’s findings would be prudent to wait for colder weather to do so, relying on the conventional wisdom that colder temperatures tend to diminish the frequency and intensity of riots and the other violent behavior (looting, arson) exhibited by the Ferguson protestors.

Legal Insurrection commenter Another Ed, however, has moved us past mere conventional wisdom on this subject by kindly linking to a scientific paper that studies precisely the correlation between riots and temperature.

That paper, “Ambient Temperature and the Occurrence of Collective Violence: A new Analysis,” by JM Carlsmith and CA Anderson of Stanford University, was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1979. It is embedded at the bottom of this post, for those of you who enjoy reading primary research scientific literature.

The Carlsmith paper conducted a re-analysis of earlier research, and found that in fact rioting (or, as they more politely refer to it “collective violence,” as if it were a workshop of some kind) increases “monotonically” with temperature.

The results of their research and analysis?

We conclude that the likelihood of a riot in a given city increases as the maximum ambient daily temperature in that city increases.

They helpfully include a graphical representation of their findings:

#Ferguson Frequency of collective violence as a function of relative temperature

(As an aside, this paper is old enough that the authors sill make use of a null hypothesis to validate their findings. Climate researchers, take note.)

How do these scientific findings apply to the Ferguson Grand Jury? Well, let us take a look at the average monthly high and low temperatures in St. Louis MO, immediately adjacent to Ferguson.

Ferguson Temps 2

Mike Brown was killed in the month of August, during which the average high temperature is 88F and the average low 70F. August also “enjoyed” the most violent of the Ferguson protests, as illustrated in the image at the top of this post.

Now, of course, we are in the month of November, with average temperatures (H:56F, L:39F) having dropped roughly 40% from their August figures. This suggests, based on the research of Carlsmith and Anderson that rioting should be much reduced in November relative to August.

Fortuitously for Ferguson, however, they are currently presented with a unique suitable opportunity to take advantage of the riot:temperature correlation in releasing the Grand Jury findings.

Specifically, temperatures for tomorrow, Monday, November 17 are currently being forecast to be well below the historical November average, hovering in the mid-20F’s.

Of course, in considering the effect of temperature on outdoor human activity merely looking at the raw temperature is not enough. One must also consider the windspeed, in combination with that temperature. And tomorrow is forecast to be an exceptionally windy day in Ferguson MO, with wind speeds in the range of 20MPH throughout the day.

The website weather.com conveniently calculates a “Feels Like” temperature that illustrates this point. Their calculations show that the “Feels Like” temperature tomorrow will have a high of 16F and a low of (wait for it) 5F.

That’s five degrees Fahrenheit.

I’ve represented the forecast raw temperature, “Feels Like” temperature, and wind speed for November 17 in the graph below.

Ferguson forecast

Based on that graph, I humbly suggest that mid-afternoon might be a particularly well-suited time for release of the news that the Grand Jury has (I expect) declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson.

Andrew F. Branca is an MA lawyer and the author of the seminal book “The Law of Self Defense, 2nd Edition,” available at the Law of Self Defense blog (autographed copies available) and Amazon.com (paperback and Kindle). He also holds Law of Self Defense Seminars around the country, and provides free online self-defense law video lectures at the Law of Self Defense Institute and podcasts through iTunes, Stitcher, and elsewhere.

U.S. 'disappointed' with Iran's IAEA cooperation ahead of nuclear talks

VIENNA Mon Nov 17, 2014 11:56am EST

(L-R) U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, European Union Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton, and Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are photographed as they participate in a trilateral meeting in Vienna in this October 15, 2014 file photo. REUTERS/Carolyn Kaster/Pool/Files

(Reuters) - The United States is disappointed with Iran's failure to engage with a U.N. nuclear agency investigation into suspected atomic bomb research, a U.S. envoy said on Monday.

Western officials say Iran must improve cooperation with the long-running International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inquiry as part of a broader diplomatic settlement which Tehran and six world powers aim to reach by a self-imposed Nov. 24 deadline.

Negotiators from Iran, the United States, France, China, Russia, Britain, Germany and the European Union meet in Vienna from Tuesday to try to end a long impasse over Tehran's atomic program that has stoked fears of a new war in the Middle East.

Potentially complicating those efforts, an IAEA report on Nov. 7 said Iran was failing to address suspicions it may have worked on designing an atomic bomb. Iran says it has no such aim and that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful.

"We've been disappointed in their failure thus far to constructively engage on this issue," Ambassador Laura Kennedy, the U.S. envoy to the Vienna-based IAEA, told reporters.

Kennedy said she would convey "our concerns with Iran's failure to engage substantively with the agency on the possible military dimensions issue" in a statement to the IAEA's 35-nation Board of Governors, which convenes on Thursday.

While the powers want Iran to curb its uranium enrichment program, and thereby lengthen the timeline for any covert attempt to assemble nuclear arms, the IAEA is investigating allegations of past research on how to make a bomb itself.

Even though it has long been clear that the IAEA's inquiry will not be completed before the target date for a deal with the powers, Western diplomats had hoped for more progress by now.

The release of videos showing Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber chortling over pulling the wool over the public's eyes to get the law passed has spawned a cottage industry on social media of Gruber nomenclature.

Washington Times:

Grubergate, gruberish, grubered, grubermania, moneygrubering and gruberpalooza are among the new terms that have sprung into public use, these inspired by one particular economist who made an unfortunate comment about Obamcare, transparency and the mental capacity of Americans recently. But such things spawn instant culture. All the new nouns and verbs - some capitalized, some not - are now appearing in multiple print and online reports from Time, Bloomberg, Fox News, Powerline, Lucianne.com and many other sources. What with Twitter hashtags and jaunty dialogue, the usage has been spirited in recent days.

“How about you man up, Stewart, and admit you were grubered into selling that Obamacare [expletive],” Fox News host Eric Bolling advised John Stewart, a rival host on Comedy Central.

“I think that no other word describes what we have seen in the climate debate quite as well as grubering. The Climategate emails are full of discussions about how to ‘sell’ the public on catastrophic anthropogenic global warming through a campaign of lies and exaggerations. There are many discussion about how the public could not possibly understand such a complex subject. ‘Climate grubering’ — its a powerful new word that can help us to describe what’s been going on,” notes Watts Up With That, a popular blog covering climate change and global warming.”

So now there are denialists, skeptics, warmists, alarmists and gruberists,” responded one reader on Sunday.

Fascinating. Here are a few more off the top of my head:

1. Grubermentia - "He was lying so often and losing track of his lies to the extent that doctors believed he was suffering from Grubermentia."

2. Disgrubered - The systematic demolishing of an argument full of lies.

3. Foregruber - A premonition that the next words out of someone's mouth are going to be a lie.

The Jerusalem police have announced that they will not return the bodies of the terrorists (pictured) who murdered four Jews this morning. They will be buried in secret, without a ceremony and without any family members present. (Link in Hebrew). Both terrorists were 'Israeli Arabs' from Jerusalem (link in Hebrew again).

Hopefully they will be coated in lard before they are buried (not part of the article - my idea).

This is the FIRST TIME the police have not returned bodies of terrorists to the families (unbelievable), although the IDF regularly keeps bodies of terrorists to exchange for soldiers.

The police have announced that they will inspect everyone leaving the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem (waiting for the 'supreme court' to decide this is 'discrimination' in 5... 4... 3... 2...) and that the terrorists' houses will be destroyed.

The terrorists' families should be expelled to Syria too (my idea - not in the article).

I am now waiting for quirk for comment about "the suspects" homes that will be razed...

If I was in charge?

I'd expel the entire extended family from any and all lands Israel has control of, seize all family property and give it to the family of those murdered.

The Justice for Mike Brown Ferguson protest group released its list of potential targets following the decision by the St. Louis County Courthouse on the Mike Brown case.

The published map shows expected landmarks like the Ferguson City Hall and the County Courthouse.

But it also marks things that have NOTHING to do with the Michael Brown situation, like Anheuser Busch and Boeing.

Most telling thing is the mark for Emerson Electric. Emerson has been in Ferguson for at least 50 years, long before Ferguson became a minority municipality. Yet not only do they mark Emerson they make note of the CEO’s salary. Maybe they’re mutating into an extortion group straight out of the playbook of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Push Coalition?

The Teaching requires us to often behave in a manner contrary to our emotions. In the instance, Jews are absolutely forbidden to desecrate corpses, particularly with reference to burial. Consequently, the momentary gratification of seeing the murderers of helpless elderly gentlemen denied proper interment places us at odds with the Divine will. Moreover, it debases Jews and Judaism, putting us and it on the same moral level as the savages who committed this atrocity. Therefore, the bodies of the Arabs should be returned at once to their families for burial, with the stipulation that they may not be buried within Jerusalem.

Since Mr. Kerry and Abu Mazen have done their best recently to stir up an intifada and have used media to that end, resulting in this morning’s murders, I suggest blocking broadcasting to and from the so-called Palestinian Authority. Preventing incitement to riot would not violate the Torah; indeed, the preservation of life and health would fully conform to commonly accepted Jewish religious standards. As to how this will be viewed by the rest of the world, I could not care less.

Three Americans, one Brit, slaughtered in Jerusalem terror attackposted at 9:31 am on November 18, 2014 by Jeff Dunetz

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Two Palestinian terrorists broke into a Synagogue in Jerusalem Tuesday morning yielding guns, knives and a meat cleaver, killing at least four worshipers and wounding at least eight, four of which are in critical or serious condition. Three the four murdered Jews were Americans: Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky, Rabbi ​Kalmen Levin and Rabbi Moshe Twersky. The fourth, Rabbi Avraham Goldberg, was a British citizen.

According to Israeli police, the two Palestinian terrorists entered the Kehilat Yaakov synagogue on Shimon Agassi St. in the Har Nof neighborhood at about 07:00 a.m., during the morning prayers. They opened fire with weapons and struck worshipers with a meat cleaver and knives.

Shas Party member Aryeh Deri, who was in the Synagogue during the attack, told Army radio there was blood on the pews and floor, with wounded and dead worshipers still wrapped in Talit (prayer shawl) and T’fillin (phylacteries, a religious article Jewish men put on during prayer). They were shouting ‘Allah Akbar,’ as they carried out the attack,” he said, and tried to call police as the murder spree unfolded.

picone

Mati Goldstein from the Zaka emergency service, said on Army Radio:

Neighbors reported screams from the synagogue during morning prayers. Then there were reports of many wounded. The two assailants, armed with axes and a least one gun, went on a killing spree and started to attack the worshippers.

The assailants cut off the arm of a worshiper wearing T’fillin, according to a statement from the organization Zaka.

Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, part of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement this morning, calling the attack a “normal reaction to the crimes of the occupation.” The claim was posted on the movement’s Facebook page and via social media. The PFLP bloody history includes Lod Airport Massacre and the attack on the Munich Olympic games.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu Said released a statement, which said in part:

This is the direct result of the incitement being led by Hamas and Abu Mazen [Palestinian Authority - PA President Mahmoud Abbas], incitement which the international community is irresponsibly ignoring. We will respond with a heavy hand to the brutal murder of Jews who came to pray and were met by reprehensible murderers. We will respond harshly.

In recent weeks leaders of the Palestinian Authority and the Fatah party, both controlled by President Mahmoud Abbas have been calling for violence in Jerusalem.

Secretary of State John Kerry called Netanyahu to offer his condolences and called on President Abbas to end the incitement of violence.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad praised the bloodbath, with a Hamas spokesperson saying it was a “response” to the suicide of an Arab bus driver Monday, which Islamists have nevertheless been blaming on “Israeli settlers” in order to stoke further tension.

An official statement from Abbas’ office said:

The presidency condemns the attack on Jewish worshipers in their place of prayer and condemns the killing of civilians.

However, as is their practice of saying one thing to the world community and something else to their own people, the Palestinian Authority’s official TV channel showed images of Bethlehem residents handing out candy in the streets in support of the attack.

The two terrorists, Uday and Ghassan Abu Jamal, both in their 20s, were members of the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine.A police spokesman told Army radio that the two terrorists, cousins, were residents of the capital’s Jabal Mukaber neighborhood. One of the terrorists apparently worked at a convenience store on the same block as the synagogue.

The Israeli government is convening their security committee to determine a response.

I am now waiting for quirk for comment about "the suspects" homes that will be razed..

Naw, that was yesterday’s story. Let’s talk about today’s story, three dicks sitting around expressing their selective umbrage over 4 Israeli’s being killed.

First some perspective.

DETROIT -

The city of Detroit led the nation in 2013 with the most dangerous murder and crime rates among big cities, according to the FBI's statistics released Monday.

There were 316 murders in Detroit last year, which is a rate of 45 per 100,000 people. Compare that to New Orleans, a city which had 156 murders in 2013 -- a rate of 41 per 100,000 people -- or Newark, N.J. which had a rate of 40 murders per 100,000 people.

Moreover, 2,072 violent crimes per 100,000 people were reported in Detroit in 2013. That's also the highest per capita rate in the U.S.

http://palsolidarity.org/2014/07/israeli-settlers-attack-palestinian-family-in-hebron-injuring-five-people-including-a-child/">Israeli settlers attack Palestinian family in Hebron, injuring five people including a child

Though Antiwar.com covers the vast majority of English-language news sites 7 days a week, and 365 days a year, it’s inevitable that sometimes we miss stories that received sparse coverage.

On Sunday, October 19, an Israeli settler ran over a pair of 5-year-old Palestinian girls returning home from kindergarten. One of the girls was killed. The story was mentioned on only a handful of sites, and went basically unreported in Europe, North America, and indeed Israel itself.

The links referenced were from a single google page. If you guys want to get into daily body counts go for it. It is friggin Israel we are talking about. What do you expect? It’s been this way for six decades and it will be this way for six more. Maybe.

I am now waiting for quirk for comment about "the suspects" homes that will be razed..

Spare me your umbrage, WiO, you are wasting your time. If you are upset, talk to Bibi. He is the guy who set off this latest round of carnage.

Had three 'Jews' (well, 2 'Jews' and one honorary ball boy) been sitting around talking about the killings I wouldn't have said anything at all; however, one of the 'Jews' decided to drag Quirk into the matter which changed the equation a little.

I rarely have anything to say about Israel here except when I see the revisionist history and bullshit you put up. The same goes for the shit the rat puts up.

In today's case, if you don't like the company, don't invite this boy to sit down at the table.

The city of Detroit led the nation in 2013 with the most dangerous murder and crime rates among big cities, according to the FBI's statistics released Monday.

There were 316 murders in Detroit last year, which is a rate of 45 per 100,000 people. Compare that to New Orleans, a city which had 156 murders in 2013 -- a rate of 41 per 100,000 people -- or Newark, N.J. which had a rate of 40 murders per 100,000 people.

Moreover, 2,072 violent crimes per 100,000 people were reported in Detroit in 2013. That's also the highest per capita rate in the U.S.

Maybe it would be better if the settlers weren't allowed to drive. Funny how a Palestinian hitting Jews in a car is 'terrorism' and Jews hitting Palestinians is just an accident albeit in numerous cases they are hit-and-run accidents.

Maybe it would be better if the settlers weren't allowed to drive. Funny how a Palestinian hitting Jews in a car is 'terrorism' and Jews hitting Palestinians is just an accident albeit in numerous cases they are hit-and-run accidents.

That website so SO accurate and truthful…

Car accidents happen, ramming a car into a bus stop on purpose is not the same.

All you did was comment on the picture that started the story off (a despicable add, faux or real, that was actually published); however, the link goes on to list about 75 other 'accidents'. As I said, maybe the settlers shouldn't be allowed drivers licenses. They appear to be worse drivers than Asian women.

If you go on to end of the link you will see an additional link that says it list 899 similar instances since December, 2010.

If you are really interested, you can sign up for an RSS feed that will give you daily updates.

If my point wasn't made clear, let me spell it out for you. A single (or four) Israeli gets killed and you guys make an entire thread of it. Daily attacks or killings of Palestinians are ignored. That's fine. I wouldn't normally comment on it. But this morning, WIO, drug me into the conversation.

To suggest that attacks on Palestinians by Israelis are all just 'accidents' as WiO does above is absurd. To suggest that criminal cases of attacks on Palestinians are handled the same way as criminal attacks on Israeli's in Israel, either by authorities or the press, goes beyond absurd.

This is not to excuse the death of 4 innocents, but merely to put them in perspective. This is nothing new. Like the murders in Detroit, this has been going on in Israel for decades and it will keep going on. The perspective voiced here that all the problems in Israel are the result of the Palestinian people is absurd in my opinion. However, if you want to voice it, do so. Just don't drag me into the conversation.

No Justice, No Peace! #Ferguson Protest Leader Has Car Stolen During “F*ck the Police” RallyPosted by Jim Hoft on Tuesday, November 18, 2014, 9:17 AM

No Justice, No Peace!Elizabeth Vega is one of the Ferguson protest leaders. She protested at sports venues and attempted a banner drop. She co-led the St Louis Symphony interruption, was arrested at the pumpkin smashing, yelled at the St Louis Post Dispatch protest, and helped block traffic with her freakshow in Clayton yesterday.

mike brown concertMike Brown protesters from Ferguson disrupted the St. Louis Symphony in St. Louis City in October. (KRON)

While yelling “F*ck the Police!” apparently her car got stolen.Do you think she’ll file a police report requesting they help her now?

Orthodox Jewish man attacked at Brooklyn train station in apparent hate crimeThe 53-year-old, identified as an Israeli tourist, was called a ‘dirty bloody Jew’ and a ‘f---ing Jew’ by his assailants, one of which beat him with his own umbrella in Williamsburg at the Marcy Ave. station before 4 p.m. Monday. The three fled on a Manhattan-bound train after a bystander intervened and was also attacked.

An idiotic comment claiming that Q will be happy with the death of the murdered man. I would take it down but will leave it to see if you have the decency to take it down yourself. What’s the matter with you?

...and the Israelis having been treating the Palestinians like street dogs. The unfortunate thing is that the four Jewish victims killed were probably were decent people and had nothing to do the outrages of the Israeli government.

That will be the same for the poor bastard Palestinians that will have had nothing to do with the killing but will be killed by the IDF in the next round of state terror and revenge by the real criminal Netanyahu.

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.